Getting Started

Thanks for trying out Jell. In this guide you'll get a good overview of how to use Jell for your team.

What Jell does

Jell helps you figure out what everyone on your team is working on using online standups or check-ins. Most people start by using it for their daily standups. But you can also use Jell to help with one-on-ones, tracking progress on goals, and much more.

What to expect if Jell is working well

Managers use Jell to solve a myriad of problems on their team. But there are a few common things we hear when Jell's working well:

1. “Meetings are a lot more useful”

The common theme is that meetings become much more meaningful and strategic. If everyone checks in with Jell, you can cut a lot of time out of your team meetings. No need to go through the tedious go-around-the-circle-and-share standups that everyone hates.

2. “Makes me more focused each day”

You may have heard of MITs or the “Rule of 3” as a way to improve productivity — this is what’s at work when your team’s using Jell. When everyone gets a chance to think deliberately about what’s important to get done each day, more gets accomplished.

3. “I actually know what people are doing”

Let’s be honest — most of your team is zoning out during your daily standups. They’re thinking about what they’re going to say when it’s their turn. Or about the bug they were about to fix right before you called them into the meeting.

With Jell, people tend to put a little bit more thought to make sure updates are relevant to others on the team. And it’s content that everyone can go back to during the day — so there’s less of a chance that someone missed what’s going on.

Best Practices

There are a few best practices that you should keep in mind before getting started on Jell:

1. Make a commitment

Your team might be reluctant to use yet-another-tool at first. But get them to pinky-swear to give it a solid effort for two weeks. Bribe them if you have to.

Otherwise, it's hard to see the value of daily communication if everyone's not participating fully.

2. Explain the value

It's important to communicate to your team why you want to use Jell. For example:

I want us to have more productive meetings

I want to solve these communication problems we've been having

I want us to reach our goals faster

If you start with the why, you're more likely to have the team use it in a way that makes it more valuable to you (and to each other).

3. Give feedback to your team

If your team's sharing their work in Jell, it's important that they get your feedback.

This can be as simple as "liking" something that they accomplished. Or posting a comment to let them know that you're engaged. It's discouraging to put time into an update and not knowing if anyone took the time to read what you wrote.

Or it might be prudent to share constructive feedback to ask for more or less detail from your team. You may need to tweak questions in the check-in, or set clear expectations about what things you want everyone to share.

Getting Setup

Once you've thought through the ideal way you want your team to to work with Jell, here are a few links to help you get setup: